Greg Rutkowski, a digital artist known for his surreal style, opposes AI art but his name and style have been frequently used by AI art generators without his consent. In response, Stable Diffusion removed his work from their dataset in version 2.0. However, the community has now created a tool to emulate Rutkowski’s style against his wishes using a LoRA model. While some argue this is unethical, others justify it since Rutkowski’s art has already been widely used in Stable Diffusion 1.5. The debate highlights the blurry line between innovation and infringement in the emerging field of AI art.
This is an interesting point, and you get into some real Ship of Theseus territory. At what point is it no longer based on his work? How many iterations before he no longer has any claim to it at all?
Its certainly interesting, but its ultimately going to be wherever we collectively decide.
One thing modern ML advancements have made painfully clear is that something being the “same” is variable based on what definition you use to determine sameness. Is it the same crew, same look, same feel, same atoms, same purpose, same name, etc… In the absence of such definition, everything ceases to be the same the moment after it has been described. As every single thing is constantly changing.
Living things naturally generalize similarities, relationships, and associations into patterns that are re-used and abstracted. So we very much take these things for granted.
If you like that type of thing you may enjoy Funes the Memorious by Luis Borges